


glass

by macabre



Series: elemental [5]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), Spider-Man - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Foster Family, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Parent Tony Stark, Protective Tony Stark, Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony adopts Peter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-27
Updated: 2020-05-27
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:09:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24411829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/macabre/pseuds/macabre
Summary: He’s made up his mind; it's fixated now, and he’s in full on prep mode going through the rooms in his penthouse, making sure that things seem livable to a teenager. He agonizes over the details; he has the file now, and knows exactly what the kid has been through, so he goes back and forth between throwing every convenience possible in the boy’s room, but then the next day he will scale it back. He doesn’t want to scare the kid or overwhelm him, but Tony also wants Peter to know that he can have anything he wants, all those things that he’s been denied since entering the system.(The unnecessary prelude to this AU series in which Tony fosters and adopts Peter.)
Relationships: Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Series: elemental [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1326329
Comments: 21
Kudos: 314





	glass

Tony didn’t believe in love at first sight; of course, such sentiments were usually confined to romantic notions of love. Sure, he’d been in love before, but it was such a fleeting thing that came to take up such a small portion of his thoughts. The idea of looking at someone - just glancing at them - and feeling something, anything - well, it was frankly ridiculous. 

He doesn’t tell anyone what he’s doing except good old Jerome. Jerome, who didn’t sign up for this shit, but his specialty in law just happens to be the closest to Tony’s needs right now, so Jerome quietly suffers through every question that Tony throws his way at three in the morning. Jerome might want to quit after this, but maybe not - even he gets a little soft around the edges when they are close to finalizing the details and he sees Peter’s picture. 

They share a feeling of surprise that nothing has leaked so far. Tony expects Pepper to come stomping in on her tallest stilettos any day now, demanding to know what he’s done. What has he done to justify this? The one thing he’s publicly denounced time and time again? The media certainly didn’t think he deserved a second chance, even after Iron Man, and he knows what they’ll think now. He knows that his friends will feel many of the same things.

Still, it doesn’t matter. He’s made up his mind; its fixated now, and he’s in full on prep mode going through the rooms in his penthouse, making sure that things seem livable to a teenager. He agonizes over the details; he has the file now, and knows exactly what the kid has been through, so he goes back and forth between throwing every convenience possible in the boy’s room, but then the next day he will scale it back. He doesn’t want to scare the kid or overwhelm him, but Tony also wants Peter to know that he can have anything he wants, all those things that he’s been denied since entering the system.

Of course, they haven’t even met yet. Because this is Tony’s first time fostering, he’s had to jump through every hoop big and small, so until certain things are finalized, the home that Peter’s staying at won’t let them meet. Best not to get his hopes up, they say, and Tony can hear the directed barb in their voice when they say that over the phone.

They don’t know what he looks like right now; like many fathers-to-be before him, he spends odd moments standing in the threshold of his to-be-son’s room and stares into it, as if it can offer a glimpse of the near future. He’s been logging fewer hours downstairs working on anything and ignoring incoming SHIELD calls, which isn’t exactly new, but still feels good. When he is downstairs in the lab, he pours over the proposed “science fair” project that Peter applied to Midtown with for the upcoming school year. 

It’s way beyond science fair level. What Peter writes about in his paper is something that Tony’s never thought of before - polymer application in ways few people have thought about - and the kid is writing in circles around the subject in a way that makes Tony think he knows more than he’s including, but holding back for whatever reason. That’s smart in its own way. 

Tony has spent a lot of time looking over this paper and the thin amount of additional material foster care supplied him; he could hack his way into more information if he wanted, but he’s stopped himself. He’d been sitting on the idea of his particular kid for awhile when FRIDAY prompted him with a file she’d dug up from his archives. 

Long ago, when Tony was still known for going on benders, but then with the aid of a weaponized iron suit, Pepper started scanning and cataloging all of the fan art and letters that came in for him. She said that one day he might like to have it all in one place, and even if he didn’t someone else might. Tony didn’t stop her, and he didn’t look at a lot of it either at the time. FRIDAY digs up a file with a submission from a Peter Parker, and there’s a simultaneous feeling of the world stopping in serendipitous fashion and also a hallelujah - he really did hire the best person he could for CEO. 

It’s strange to add the picture that a kid Peter drew several years ago into the file that Tony’s made. He keeps it on top to remind himself of the implication; any kid Tony picked would obviously know exactly who Tony Stark is - that is unavoidable - but to pick a kid who might have Iron Man hero worship adds another level. Granted, Peter made this when he was a kid, still maybe hopeful for a hero to save him.

The picture dates back to the Chitauri invasion of New York; Tony wonders where Peter was when it happened, and who was with him. His parents would have been gone by then.

The night before comes; it’s not the night before Peter will come home with him, but it’s the night before they first meet. Tony doesn’t bother trying to sleep. He frets about in Peter’s room and the living room - he catalogues the fridge’s contents. He memorizes Midtown’s upcoming academic schedule. It feels like Peter should be coming home tomorrow.

In the morning, he settles on wearing a Tom Ford jacket over a graphic tee: a signature look that the home should expect no more or less of. He keeps his sunglasses on as he enters the foyer, shakes hands with a young grey haired woman, and keeps his pace steady behind her through the halls. Because it’s spring and it’s a nice enough day out, she leads him into the back where there’s a small garden. It’s more exposed mud than anything else, but there is a small table with chairs standing. 

He’s sitting there already, his back to them. Tony knows it’s him, because he recognizes that exact shade of tawny curls. The kid is hunched in on himself in a striped shirt several sizes too big, picking at his nails. They’re red from a distance. 

“Peter!” Toya, his host for the day, greets. “Tony is here.”

Slowly, Peter turns. His eyes go from dazed and cautious to a widened and scared. Tony can see him gulp down air, can practically feel the sweat that breaks out on the back of the kid’s neck. He looks well and completely shocked, his mouth hanging open a little. A moment passes, then he jerks upright, knocking over the chair he was sitting in. Tony thinks he’s going to run - towards him or away from him, he is unsure.

Then there’s that feeling, the one before mentioned and pondered about. Tony can’t help but feel like parental love is the only kind of love that can possibly exist at first sight. Peter looks a mess and a fright - he’s trying to right the chair, but there’s so much mud from all the rain that he’s now nervously wiping mud from his hand onto his jeans. This kid would look like a scrawny mess to anyone else maybe, but to Tony - well, the rose tinted glasses aren’t just the ones sitting on his nose. 

“Mr. Stark,” Peter’s voice breaks, like he hasn’t spoken to anyone in weeks. “I didn’t know - I didn’t know.” He sounds as young as looks, which is younger than his actual age. His fingers nervously tap on his thigh, like he can’t quite seem to stop them. He looks anywhere but at Tony now. The ground, his shoes. The fence beyond them or an upstairs window. 

“Hey kid. You can call me Tony.” He takes a couple steps closer to Peter, originally intending to shake the kid’s hand, but he immediately abandons the thought. Shake hands with his future kid? No. Hug his future kid? Yes. Right? 

They don’t hug; they both nervously orbit each other. Peter looks like he wants to run and hide, and Tony can’t blame him. For all his preparation and obsessive and orderly planning, he too suddenly feels the need to run. 

“It’s, ugh, really nice to meet you, Peter.” God, he sounds like an asshole. “I’ve been looking forward to it.”

Peter’s head whips around, and for a moment, he actually looks Tony in the eye. “Really?”

Tony smiles. He removes the sunglasses so Peter can see him fully. “Yeah, of course. Didn’t they tell you how I’ve been hounding them for more information about you?”

Peter deflates, looking down again. “No. They only told me this morning someone was interested. They didn’t tell me who it was.”

When Tony turns around to look at Toya, she has the same pleasant smile plastered on her face. “Really?” he asks. “You didn’t tell him I was coming?” 

They didn’t forewarn a kid that someone who could both better their life and ruin it in the same ways might foster and adopt them? For everything Tony offers, he knows that it comes with a price, and it’s a price that a kid needs to know. 

“It’s policy, Mr. Stark.” She doesn’t falter, standing there like a guard with her clasped hands in front of her and straight posture. He looks between her and the nervous kid in front of him.

“Could we - could we have a minute to ourselves?”

“That’s against policy, Mr. Stark.”

“Right. Of course.” Tony sighs. 

She does take a step back, leaning against the door they came through. There’s a sizable distance between them, but her eyes never leave Tony’s back. He can feel them there, burning through his jacket. 

Tony takes a seat at the table in front of Peter. The kid cautiously lowers himself back in the chair, so hunched over that his hair completely covers his eyes from Tony. 

He has no idea where to start. “I read the paper you wrote this year. The one for Midtown.”

It works - Peter’s head pops up, but only for a moment. One of his knees starts to bounce up and down manically. He doesn’t say a word.

“I was impressed. Schooled even, by a fourteen-year-old.”

Nothing. Peter does not engage. 

Is he already experiencing what it will be like with a sullen teen? Of course, that’s completely unfair. Peter’s been blindsided by Tony’s arrival. 

“You’ll love Midtown next year.”

“M-Midtown? I got in?” Peter looks truly astonished, a gleeful look passing briefly over his face as he smiles to himself.

“Of course you did, kid. You’re clearly -” Tony stamps out the word brilliant. Brilliant is a loaded word for anyone. “You’re clearly going to do great there.”

Except Peter’s face falls at all. “Oh.”

Oh? What a horrible one syllable non-word. Peter’s jiggling knee ratchets up into supersonic frequency. Tony leans forward a little, trying to see more of the kid’s face, except it startles Peter, jumping further back, away from Tony. 

“What’s up, kid? You sounded pretty excited about it a second ago.”

“It’s just - I didn’t hear anything from them. And now you’re here.” 

For a second, Tony is still too blinded by his initial fondness to track Peter’s thought process - he thinks the kid biting his lip looks cute, for God’s sake, and that shit would be annoying from anyone else - but it does click. 

“Oh, Peter. You got in all on your own.” Tony tries to give him a reassuring smile, as if the kid is looking. “I’m sorry if you didn’t know - apparently transparency of information can be, ugh, delayed here, but you got in all on your own. It was decided before me.”

“But you’re decided? On me, I mean?” 

Tony knows exactly how many foster homes Peter has been placed in, and he knows exactly how many days he spent in the last one. “I’m decided, Peter Parker.”

Peter doesn’t really say much more over the course of the hour they spend together; he will answer a direct question, isn’t rude, but clearly overwhelmed by what’s happening. Tony makes himself prattle on and on; he’s been called a windbag before, but never before has it felt this difficult to keep himself going. He does it because he can tell that Peter is slowly relaxing. His knee stops, and his hands settle into his lap, even if a few fingernails look pretty raw now. One ear is tipped more towards Tony, intently listening, even if he can’t see the kid’s face well.

Precisely on the hour, Toya steps up behind Peter very quietly and tells them it’s time for Peter to get ready for lunch. The boy stands, maintaining his crooked posture and fisting his hands in the hem of his shirt. 

When Tony stands, there is a moment in which he thinks now he might be able to go in for a hug. 

But that moment comes and goes. Peter says, “It was nice to meet you, Mr. Stark.” Then he leaves. Walks up the stairs and disappears inside. 

Tony watches him go, and Toya watches him. “He doesn’t think this is real, does he?”

Toya shrugs. “All the kids here have been placed in multiple homes before coming to stay in this location. If they land here, they’ll probably age out here too.” She comes off as dismissive, maybe even cold, but Tony can tell there is no malice behind the words. He really is just another potential foster to her, and fostering situations are nebulous at best, Jerome reminded him. 

“Everything is clear on my end. Today’s visit was the last check on my application.” Tony slides his sunglasses back on.

“We know, Mr. Stark.” Her bland smile doesn’t falter. He can’t tell if he passed the test or not. 

“You gonna tell him the next time I come to get him?” 

For the first time, he can see her guard come down, just for a moment. She raises an eyebrow. “You have to be sure before we can be sure, Mr. Stark.”

He wants to cross his arms, but he doesn’t. “I’ll be waiting for your call.”

“Have a good day, Mr. Stark.”

At home, he takes to spinning his old reactor in its box around in his hands. He spins it on his coffee table, on his work bench. On the counter while he waits for his espresso to pull. 

Proof that Tony Stark has a heart.

He still hasn’t told anyone, but at least the one person who needed to know, knows. 

Peter comes home with him a little over a month later after a few more visits, the last of which wasn’t officially needed but Tony thought Peter needed. Peter is quiet in the car on the way to the penthouse. He’s quiet in the elevator that ushers them upstairs. He’s quiet as he follows Tony out and into the living quarters. 

“Well, this is it, kid. Just you and me now.”

Peter gingerly peels off his beat-up sneakers. He lines them up by the wall next to the elevator. There are no other shoes, or any other belongings of any kind there, so Tony takes off his shoes and places them next to his. 

If it’s not love at first sight, it’s the closest thing to it.


End file.
